1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an image pickup apparatus which can be used for, for example, a digital camera having a moving picture photographing function, and a moving picture photographing method thereof.
2. Description of the Related Art
Conventionally, as a recording system of moving picture having large information content, there is a system in accordance with MPEG (Motion Picture Experts Group) standard. In the MPEG system, an inter-frame predictive coding technique in which high encoding efficiency can be obtained in compression/extension of moving picture formed from a plurality of frames is used. Generally, in encoding processing of the MPEG system, because YUV data such as reference data, search data, or the like are stored in a memory such as an SDRAM or the like, and an MPEG encoder frequently accesses to the memory and repeats reading and writing the above-described data, extremely large memory transferring amounts are generated in the process.
On the other hand, there are many types of portable telephone with a camera and digital still camera (hereinafter, simply called a digital camera) which have a moving picture photographing function in addition to a normal still image photographing function. In recent years, there has been a trend in which the MPEG system is used for recording moving picture therein.